Palaeontologist: Dinosaur Footprints – Biomechanics – Simulation
**WARNING - this is a very niche rant** I'm quite a tech nerd. I enjoy gadets, and phones, and even writing software and addons. A big part of this is that I just generally enjoy interacting with my computer's operating system to get stuff done. I've been firmly embedded in Windows most of my life,... Continue Reading →
Recently for our paper on hominid tracks, I was visualizing some topographic images of footprints using blender. We were asked by the journal not to use the standard red-green-blue colour scale as it's not great either for colour blind people, or for conveying subtle changes in topography. Rather than use black-white, as I've done in... Continue Reading →
As part of the ERC consolidator grant (now UKRI Horizon Guarantee), I'm looking to hire three people to help me work on dinosaur tracks and locomotor mechanics: First up, a Research Support Assistant. This is pretty broad, but I'm looking for someone to help with CT scanning/segmenting and X-ray (#XROMM) data collection, as well as... Continue Reading →
In this post, I want to tell you about a paper that I co-authored with Kevin Hatala and Stephen Gatesy, which was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. It’s called “Arched footprints preserve the motions of fossil hominin feet” and it’s about how we can use fossil footprints to learn about the way our ancient... Continue Reading →
I've had a keen eye on Alicevision Meshroom since it's first major release back in... 2018? Development of the open source photogrammetry software has felt slow for the past few years, but just this week a new release was pushed out, 2023.1.0. Here's the official new feature list: Release Notes Summary Major improvements of the... Continue Reading →
It's a while since I've posted about new papers, so I'm going to have a series of posts catching up on 2022's papers. First up is Jens Lallensack's cool paper in Interface about using AI and machine learning to distinguish between theropod and ornithopod tracks. For those unfamiliar, ornithopod tracks and theropod tracks are both... Continue Reading →
My last post compared the raw performance of my new Surface Laptop Studio (SLS) against my old Desktop and my wife’s M1 Macbook Pro. The results were not particularly exhilarating to say the least. The SLS was mostly ok when plugged in, holding it’s own against the MacBook Pro in simple rendering/photogrammetry, but losing out... Continue Reading →
Ok, I've outlined in my previous post that the Surface Studio Laptop is a lovely device, and a potential candidate for replacing my aging desktop. So the question is, how well does it cope with the kind of workloads I have? Left, the Surface Laptop Pro. Middle - the monitor for my Desktop. Right, the... Continue Reading →
My home desktop has been having some issues recently – crashes, general slowness here and there. I’ve mentioned the computer many times on my blog, and it’s what I’ve been using consistently for all my photogrammetry testing. I bought it from DinoPC, and I’ve nothing but good words to say about it – it’s been... Continue Reading →
A few weeks ago, and with the upcoming Society of Experimental Biology annual meeting coming up, I decided to try out the Samsung Galaxy Fold 3. I was interested in a device I could use for taking notes on during talks, much as I have in the past with my Surface devices (mainly the Go... Continue Reading →
